Skin Deep
by maydei
Summary: Gleeroes-verse.  Blaine just wants to be normal. Quinn just wants to fit in. Kurt wants to take away the things that make them special. Finn just wants to save his brother, and, like it or not, Blaine is going to help him.  Eventual Klaine.
1. Part One

**Well... this isn't Lie to Me, either. But it's a start. I got the idea to collide Heroes and Glee, and then it turned into an analysis of how things could have been with different characters. **

**Blaine is a very Lyle-like character, constantly in his stepsister's (Quinn's) shadow. Quinn is the favored child, and her ability draws little notice. HRG (Noah Bennet "Fabray") is fiercely protective of his daughter and overlooks his stepson. Kurt takes Sylar's place, if things were just a little different. **

**This really is a worlds-collide thing. There's no way to accurately describe it. You'll just have to wait and see how it all plays out. Also posted on my Tumblr, where I was asked by the lovely abbraci if I would put it up here.**

**Special thanks to blaineywainey, who told me to forget my coursework and write fic. Who knew that this crack-ish idea would take such a psychological turn.**

**This will be told in cycling points of view in no particular order.**

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><p><strong><strong>_Blaine_

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><p>"Blaine Anderson-Fabray-<em>yyy!<em>" A familiar voice tinged with a sing-song southern drawl called to him, discernible despite the fact that its owner lived two floors above him. "Hurry up, lil' brother, or Coach Sue and Coach Beiste will chew us up and spit us out before we get on the field!"

"Jus' a minute, Quinn!" Blaine replied, voice cracking under the heavy weight of his anxiety, jumping in place to pull a pair of well-worn jeans over the top of red-and-white uniform pants, matching top already hidden beneath an off-season sweatshirt. He was going to _bake_ in the hot Texas sunlight, but that was a fair price to pay, so long as his stepfather didn't see him in his uniform for the Union McKinley High School _Cheerios_.

Noah Fabray was a stern man, a veteran of some sort of government force that Blaine didn't quite have the courage to ask about. All Blaine knew was that, after what had happened with his _own_ father, there was no way he was going to make the same mistake twice. To this very day, he still blamed himself for his father walking out on he and his mother. He'd been terrified his mother would never find anyone else to make her happy—but then, well, along came the Fabray family, Quinn's mother having passed away a few years prior and Noah catching _his_ mother's eye, and the rest, as they day, was history.

His mother had begged him to lie low about his _condition_, as she liked to call it. Blaine didn't really see a problem with that, as he was ashamed of it enough, himself.

Blaine wasn't so keen on being a part of the Cheerios, but Union McKinley High School didn't have any arts programs, and Blaine was a musician, born and bred. And if the only sort of music and performance he could come across was as an undercover male cheerleader, then he would take what he could get.

He let Noah believe that he was on the football team. He didn't care enough for details, only cared that his precious daughter Quinn was happy, and that was that. Blaine would drive her in for afternoon cheer practices, and Noah never asked any questions.

Quinn was nice enough, though, and even though her long-time boyfriend, Noah Puckerman—known mainly as _Puck _to avoid confusion—was one of the most well-known bullies in school, he loved Quinn enough to go along with whatever she said—including leaving her stepbrother in peace, and mentioning Blaine in conjunction with the school football team every once in a while. It was more than enough to keep everyone happy.

Well, everyone but Blaine.

He loved Quinn, he really did. She was pretty and sweet and fiercely protective of him, but he knew that, after she graduated next year, things were going to be hell. There would be no Quinn to look after him, no Puck to keep the other jocks off his back, no one to distract his stepfather, with his sharp eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, from Blaine's _condition_.

Not for the first time, Blaine wished he could have lived anywhere else but a suburban town in Bible Country, Texas.

Maybe then, his mother would see the problem of his almost-instant healing from any wound as more of a _condition_ than the fact that he liked boys.


	2. Part Two

_Quinn_

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><p>"Sloppy! You're <em>sloppy<em>!" Coach Sylvester roared through her megaphone. "You think this is hard? Try having hepatitis! _That's_ hard!"

Quinn stifled a giggle behind her hand, catching an irritated glance from Blaine. No one was ever sure if Sue Sylvester was serious about the more ridiculous things she said to intimidate them, and though they laughed, they would never push her hard enough to find out.

"Quinn," Blaine hissed as the squad got back in formation. "Don't lock your knees when you go up, it'll help you balance."

She gave him an appreciative smile as the routine started back up, not having enough time to give him proper thanks. That was okay—she would tell him in private once they got home.

Quinn had a terrible soft spot for her self-dubbed _baby brother_. Blaine took it in good humor, since he knew Quinn didn't say it to rile him, and she liked that about him. Most guys would get so uptight over things like that, but Blaine took it in stride. It helped that she was his one confidant, the one person Blaine trusted enough to tell the truth to about his so-called _condition_. Quinn knew, then, that it would be her duty to keep him safe, just like her father had kept her safe for all these years.

"_Quinn Fabray," her father told her sternly. "That's your name, repeat after me. Quinn Fabray. Say it."_

"_What happened to being Lucy Bennet?" the girl had asked then, all glasses and braces and a little extra weight that could still be considered baby fat. She'd barely been thirteen at the time._

"_Lucy Bennet is gone," Noah Bennet had told her. "She has to disappear so she can stay safe. You understand, don't you? Or do you want to be taken away?"_

"_No!" she exclaimed in young, innocent horror. "Quinn Fabray," she repeated dutifully, if not a little tearfully. "Quinn Fabray, Quinn Fabray, Quinn Fabray..."_

Quinn shook her head. Her life as Lucy Bennet was long since over, her life as Quinn starting as they moved from a small town in Pennsylvania to Odessa, Texas. She played the role of a southern belle well, she was told. With her transition, her life improved, though she figured her father probably had something to do with that. She lost weight, she got nice things, she became popular. It was likely a bribe, but she hadn't realized it then. She was just so happy at finally being _accepted_ somewhere to realize that it probably wasn't the nice things that drew people to her.

"_You're what we call a Mediator, Quinn. You're a peacekeeper, it's what you do," Noah Bennet—**Fabray**, always **Fabray**—told her at the start of the year._

"_What I do?" she asked in confusion._

"_Yes. It's a very subtle ability, one that will probably escape notice. That's a good thing. It will keep you safe, because people will always like you. It would be terribly difficult for anyone to **dislike** you."_

"_I don't understand, Daddy," she sighed. "Ability, you said?"_

"_Yes, Quinn. You're a senior in high school now, and I can't protect you forever. It's time you knew the truth."_

He'd told her, and at first, she'd been horrified when he brought her the case files of others like her, the pictures of horrible things that she could barely imagine. Her father worked for a facility called _Primatech_, one that hunted down the more dangerous people with abilities and kept them away from normal people.

He'd assured her that she would never be locked up—she was safe. Her ability was mild and harmless, and as long as he could keep an eye on her and defend her, she would be able to live a normal life, a life that Quinn wanted desperately.

She would do whatever he told her. If people liked her, that was okay. It was only when Blaine first arrived that she truly realized what it was like for people not to like you all the time. She'd seen the bruises on his shoulders that first week, the scars on his back that he'd told her were from being bullied, and she knew that she had to keep him safe. He was family, he was _hers_, and even though she wouldn't always be there, she would look after him while she could.

Blaine was a sweet boy who just so happened to live in a very wrong place. He belonged somewhere big, somewhere accepting, not a small town in Texas that Quinn knew she would probably return to and settle down in one day. That was her destiny, her fate.

That wasn't Blaine's fate.

He would do big things, she was sure. He would break out and go places, see the world, change lives, maybe. He was terribly smart, lined well enough up that he could be a doctor, if he wanted to. She tried to encourage him subtly toward NYU, an idea that Blaine seemed happy to go along with.

No matter what, Quinn knew that Blaine was destined for a life of importance—with struggle, like most lives, but a life of significance nonetheless.

She didn't know how right she was.


End file.
